


To Make Bright and Clear Your Path

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Everyone lives, F/M, Fluff, Light Smut, Minor Luke Skywalker/Bodhi, Nobody died, One Shot, POV Cassian Andor, Pining Cassian, Rogue One Fix-It, mild misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Cassian Andor has been a soldier since he was old enough to pick up a weapon. He survived the Death Star's attack on Scarif, and he has returned to Yavin 4 to train a new generation of spies.Now on Yavin 4, he tries to handle the one thing he never expected: a chance to act on his feelings for a certain, hot-tempered soldier who helped to build a rebellion with nothing more than hope.





	To Make Bright and Clear Your Path

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday fic for [melanoradrood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melanoradrood/pseuds/melanoradrood) , rebelcaptain expert and fic-writer-extraordinaire! <3
> 
>  
> 
> Referenced non-graphic smut.

The lights flash through the trees of Yavin 4, and Cassian creeps through the undergrowth.

“I escaped the Death Star,” he mutters. “I can escape you, too.”

“There is no escape,” a coy voice reminds him. A tap on his shoulder makes him spin around, but there’s nothing there. “There is only surrender.” Another light tap to his stomach has him facing forward and doubling over.

Cassian coughs, hamming it up for a second, and raises his eyes to his attacker.

Jyn Erso stands in the forest, her eyes still the most beautiful shade of green he’s ever seen, even on a jungle moon, and tilts her head to the side examining him. “You won’t get any sympathy from me, Captain Andor,” she says primly.

“I’d expect no less from the daughter of Saw Gerrera,” Cassian gasps, still clutching his stomach.

“So you do surrender, then?” Jyn asks, already planting her foot behind her and raising her fists in front of her.

“Never,” Cassian declares. Jyn smirks and makes no move; not until Cassian, taking a chance, kicks out wildly with his good leg, and Jyn spins to avoid it, striking him lightly in the ribs on his opposite side.

“I don’t even think you’re trying, Cass,” she laughs. “C’mon, we’ve been out of Med Bay for four months now, we aren’t going to break anymore than we already did.”

She makes jokes, but Cassian isn’t quite ready to yet. Not since he saw her floating in bacta, not since he dragged himself and his shattered leg down a hallway of flickering lights and cold duracrete to find her, not since she flatlined three times – Kay had been so particular in sharing that detail with him when he’d woken up, so particular in sharing the terrible, terrible odds of her not recovering – not since he’d found the greatest wonder of the galaxy just to almost lose her.

Jyn Erso can make jokes about her brush with death, but Cassian Andor fucking can’t. Not yet. Not ever.

He strikes at her instead, less playfully this time, and Jyn ducks under his flat hand, as lithe as a Lotho-Cat; she ducks and weaves around his next attempts, and eventually, they forego structured blows and switch to a more aggressive style of near-wrestling.

They crash through the trees, more a game of tag, after Jyn taps him on the stomach again and says, “Catch me, Andor,” and they break out of the treeline and head for the underground entrance to the temple. He achieves his goal at the last second, snagging her around the waist, both of them slamming into the side of the structure at almost full speed.

“Caught you,” he gasps, still not fully recovered from Scarif himself, but glad for the light sheen of sweat and the useful kind of pain awakening his muscles. Cassian misses doing physical things. He wasn’t built for desk work, and while training the new intelligence officers isn’t exactly filing paperwork, it isn’t field work either. Senator Mothma and the princess had been very adamant about him not pursuing active spy work anymore, and logistically he understands.

Emotionally, though, and when taking into account his pride. Cassian’s never felt more useless.

It’s easy to forget his impotence with a hundred pound wildcat barely under control in front of him. Jyn Erso is like him, and unlike him; she is like him in that she has had to play many roles in her short life, and she is like him in that she almost lost who she was in the attempt to survive.

Jyn Erso is not like him, in that the spark inside her has only flared brighter in the months since Scarif. Despite her proximity to death upon their return, her physical recovery was more complete; now, she trains with the Pathfinders, and is officially a Sergeant with the army. She works with a number of respectable people, all of whom are in awe of her guerilla warfare knowledge and her dedication to the cause.

Cassian can’t believe he ever accused her of not caring about the fate of the Rebellion. As far as he’s concerned, she  _is_ the Rebellion now. After Scarif, Rogue One had become a bit of a living legend – Bodhi was still shaken from his torture, and Baze and Chirrut had traveled to another ancient Jedi planet to continue their Guardian work, so Jyn was the natural face of their team, beautiful and young and vibrant. Added to her seeming inability to die, Jyn’s a favorite throughout the Rebellion. Cassian snorts when people flock to her in the mess hall – he knows she’d rather stab all of them with her fork than talk to anyone when she’s trying to eat.

She scowls at just about everyone, which doesn’t seem to detract from their desire to know her. Cassian understands that, too. Jyn Erso has her own gravity. No one was immune, least of all him. And he takes private,  _private_ pleasure in the fact that he is the only person on this base who she seeks out for conversation or company. At all. She lets Kay talk to her, sometimes, and R2D2, Luke Skywalker’s plucky droid, and she’s certainly gentle with Bodhi, but Cassian’s the only thing with lungs that she lets in.

Now, he’s leaning over her, and she’s staring up at him, still smirking, and he’s definitely not immune to her gravity. He’s still panting slightly from their sprint through the trees, and Jyn’s slightly out of breath too. He’s going crazy, absolutely out of his mind from how close they are.

“What are you thinking, Cassian?” Jyn asks, her chin lifted defiantly as always.

“I’m thinking about what I need,” he answers honestly. Cassian cuts himself off, blushing. Don’t go there. Don’t ever go there, not with her. She doesn’t need to have his darkness taint her light.

He determinedly does not look at the bow of Jyn’s upper lip, the landscape he’s found himself lost in more and more these days.

“What do you need, Cass?” Jyn arches her brow at him, not making a move to get out from underneath his arms, his hands still braced on either side of her against the base. He curses himself for losing his trail of thought.

“A drink,” he says lamely. “I need a drink. I’d kill for one, actually.”

She snorts and ducks out from under his arms, away from him. She nudges him with her shoulder on the way by. “I’d say I doubted that, but I’ve killed for less.” Jyn turns slightly to smirk at him and walks towards the base’s entrance.

Cassian finds that after a lifetime of being sure of himself, there’s nothing that’s gotten under his skin quite like Jyn Erso. He waits for the daily rain to start and lets it pour off of him, drenching his hair and shirt, before he turns and walks back inside. He hadn’t noticed while she was with him, but in Jyn’s absence, his limp is undeniable.

He curses his cowardice in not telling her how much he needs her.

***

Cassian drums his fingers impatiently on the table in the mess hall.

“Are you okay, Captain Andor?” Luke asks him, concerned. Cassian flicks his eyes over to him, and then back to the source of his irritation.

“Never better,” he snaps. The drumming of his fingers intensifies.

“Are you sure, Cassian? No one or nothing is bugging you?” Bodhi sounds less sympathetic than Luke, and Cassian scowls at him briefly, trying to communicate with his eyes how much he knows about Bodhi’s crush on a certain Jedi. Bodhi has no room to talk. The pilot picks up on the expression and blushes, looking nervous. “Sorry.”

“Chin up, Rook,” Luke smiles at him. “There’s second portions today!” Bodhi smiles tentatively at Skywalker’s perpetual optimism, and it’d be cute. If Cassian weren’t so distracted. There’s an empty seat at their usual table.

Jyn Erso isn’t sitting with them today.

She’s across the mess hall, talking to Kes Dameron.

Pretty Boy Dameron.

She’s across the mess hall, talking to Kes Dameron, and putting her hand on his forearm, laughing lightly. He can hear it.

He can’t actually hear it, but he knows what it sounds like. Gods, he knows what it sounds like. It sounds like the dawn chorus on Fest, it sounds like bursting out of Jedha’s atmo, it sounds like the feeling in the hangar after Luke came back from destroying the Death Star.

Cassian Andor doesn’t deserve that laugh. But, Kes Dameron doesn’t deserve that laugh, either.

Bodhi and Luke are still talking – well, Luke is talking about moisture farming on Tatooine, and Bodhi’s hanging on every word as if he hadn’t been to over 100 Imperial planets in his time as a pilot, his chin in his hand and eyes wide – and don’t pick up on Cassian’s agitation. Luke’s a Jedi, so the part of Cassian’s brain that’s always analyzing wonders at his lack of concern for the way Cassian’s ripping out of his skin.

Then, he looks over, about to open his mouth and ask  _What do you think Dameron’s doing with Erso?_ when he sees Luke hang his head and blush furiously when Bodhi compliments him on his  _fucking_ hair.

Gods.

Everyone’s pairing up.

At least he has Kay.

Cassian can’t stand it anymore, and he stands up to go over to the table and request Jyn’s presence at a briefing this afternoon with the new spies (she could probably teach them something, she could teach all of them something, with her skillset), but she and Kes stand up from the table, at the same time.

Kes gestures towards the door with his head, Jyn smirks at him, and they walk towards the exit.

“Don’t turn right,” Cassian mutters. Sleeping quarters are to the right. Training rooms are to the left.

They turn right.

“Fuck,” Cassian sits back down forlornly.

“Cassian?” Luke asks, eyes wide. He finally noticed, then.

“Mind your own business, Jedi,” Cassian stabs his fork at him and then groans. He slides his rations over to Luke and Bodhi and dismisses himself, abruptly, stalking to the doors.

He doesn’t turn right.

***

Cassian passes by Kes Dameron and a group of Pathfinders the next day in the hallways near the training rooms for pilots.

“—gods, that was almost too easy,” Dameron chortles. “Erso was desperate, though.”

Cassian storms forward and grabs Dameron by the lapels of his stupid jacket.

“The fuck?” Kes bites out before Cassian drags him away from his buddies, not an easy feat. Kes is four inches shorter than him, but more muscular, broader, heavier. Cassian has anger on his side though, a powerful tool.

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that,” Cassian snarls, slamming Kes into the nearest durasteel wall.

“Whoa, Captain,” Kes raises his hands in surrender. “Talk about what now?”

“Jyn,” he hisses, dragging him along the hallway and shoving him around the corner, out of the sight of the wide-eyed Pathfinders. “Sergeant Erso,” he corrects himself. “You can’t talk about Sergeant Erso like that.”

“What?” Dameron clearly isn’t getting it.

“You called her  _desperate._ ” Cassian cusses at him for ten seconds in Festan, knowing that Yavinese is a sister-dialect and Kes’ll more than understand what he’s comparing him to. “You don’t deserve her, Dameron. Not for a fucking second. If she even  _looks_ at you, you don’t deserve that.”

“What?” Kes shoves him off, hard, and Cassian steps back, ready to punch him in the stupid holo-star jaw. “I don’t know what you think you’re talking about –” His finger comes up to jab at Cassian’s nose, and he swats it out of the air.

“If she sleeps with you,’ Cassian begins shaking his head. “Even if she gives you the fucking time of day, you don’t get to call her desperate. It’s disgusting to talk about any woman that way, Dameron.”

“Yeah, it is,” Kes agrees. “Which is why I don’t talk about women that way.”

“You just did,” Cassian crowds into him again, fuming. This really can’t be good for his image as calm and collected spy, but he’s never been able to calm himself where Jyn Erso’s concerned.

“She – fuck, Andor, she heard that I had contraband, okay?”

“What?” Cassian stares at him in surprise.

“Yeah, yeah – my parents lived on this moon, bantha brains. I lived here. I know where to get hull stripper, that’s fucking all. Jyn made a trade with me, and she was willing to uphold her end of the bargain because for whatever reason  _she was desperate to get alcohol._ That’s all!” Kes shakes his head. “I’d hit you again, but I’m afraid of a court martial. So, if you don’t mind.” Kes raises his eyebrows pointedly and looks over Cassian’s shoulder.

“Fine,” Cassian spits. “Just. Watch your mouth.”

“Obviously,” Dameron rolls his eyes, and Cassian really is tempted to write him up for insubordination. “And, do me a favor, and don’t tell Sergeant Erso I called her desperate. She’s terrifying.”

Kes Dameron storms past him and disappears down the hallway.

When Cassian turns around, Kay has materialized out of gods know where.

“Don’t say anything,” Cassian warns, already moving to walk past his unfriendly droid.

“There is a significant statistical probability that Kes Dameron will inform Sergeant Erso of your confrontation,” Kay says simply. “And there is almost a statistical certainty that one of the witnesses to the confrontation will say something to her. Would you like to know the specific odds?”

“Enough with the odds!” Cassian keeps walking, but Kay follows him, and serves him some very unwanted figures.

***

Cassian walks briskly towards his quarters around 20:00, when he’s accosted by a very short, very angry woman.

“What the fuck were you doing earlier today?” Jyn Erso demands, hand on her hip. Her blaster is very close to her hand. Cassian finds himself almost wishing that she’d pull it out and use it on him, so he could avoid this conversation.

“Training,” he snipes, stepping to the side and trying to go around her. She blocks him, and grabs his wrist.

“No, I mean, I heard you were defending my honor and threatening to throw Kes Dameron out of an airlock.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cassian says dismissively. “There’s no airlock, we’re underground.” He wouldn’t mind throwing Kes Dameron out of an airlock, to be completely fair. He walks towards his room once again, trying to broadcast his lack of interest in continuing this discussion, but Erso ignores his signals.

“What do you suddenly have against Dameron?” Jyn demands. “He’s nice enough, and you said just last week that he was one of the better soldiers you’d ever seen. And that’s very high praise from you.”

“He and I had a difference of opinion,” Cassian snaps.

“Really?” Jyn asks. “I don’t think that’s true, Cassian. Cassian!” She calls his name again while he’s typing his access code into his door. He sighs and turns around to face her. Jyn looks infuriated, but then her face relaxes into its regular half-smile. “Are you sure it wasn’t about what you  _need_?” She asks coyly.

“What?” Cassian snaps. His doors hiss open behind him, but he doesn’t run into his room like he’d planned. Not when Jyn Erso has her own, personal, inescapable gravity.

Jyn opens one of the pouches on her belt and pulls out a small glass bottle of hull stripper. “You know. What you need.” She waves the bottle around. “I traded with Dameron for this, and then you almost killed him over it. We should at least try and drink it.”

“You think that was about hull stripper?” He asks, before he can stop the words from coming out of his mouth. “Gods, Erso.”

Instead of looking combative or offended, Jyn looks oddly triumphant. “No,” she says, walking forward, grabbing his hand, and pressing the bottle into his palm. “No, I don’t think it was.” Jyn strokes the soft skin under his wrist and looks up at him with a clear challenge in her eyes. “So, why don’t you tell me what you actually need, Andor?”

Cassian shakes his head. “I’m not playing this game with you, Sergeant,” he says coldly. He turns and walks into his room, but he makes the mistake of not closing the door the second he passes the threshold. Jyn follows him into his quarters and closes the door behind herself.

“I’m not playing a game either, Captain. We’ve both been dancing around this for months now.” Jyn doesn’t look any less challenging, and something twists inside of him. “So, tell me. Do you need me, too?”

“Yes,” he clears his throat, and Jyn has the decency to look surprised at his honesty. “Yes, I need you, of course I need you. I haven’t exactly been hiding it, Jyn.”

“So, Dameron wasn’t lying?” She smirks, but it’s a softer smirk than usual.

“Dameron,” Cassian groans. “I really am going to write him up. Gossiping busybody.”

“I don’t think it counts as gossip when you body check him first,” Jyn points out, amused. Cassian realizes that they’re circling each other in the low light of his bunk. Orbiting bodies. Her Kyber crystal seems to grow brightly in the half-darkness. Her eyes glow even brighter. “So, if you need me, and I need you, what are we going to do about it? Besides attack upstanding officers, that is.”

“Enough with the jokes, Jyn,” Cassian says. “Please.”

They stop circling each other, and Jyn looks at him, obviously surprised.

“This isn’t some itch to scratch,” he warns her. “Not for me. And I’m not afraid to admit it. If we do this, we do this. It’s not a game, it’s not a trade, it’s not just something we’ll joke about during training. It’ll be real.” She nods, once.

“Okay, then,” Jyn says. “It’s not a joke. It’s real. So – what do you need, Cassian?”

Cassian walks towards her, letting natural instinct dictate the way he prowls forward. Jyn stumbles back slightly, but he grabs her by the upper arms and jerks her towards him. “I need this,” he says, leaning in. He gives her enough time to slug him, because he has no doubt she would if she didn’t want him to do this, and he asks, “Do you?” Jyn nods, unblinking as she looks into his eyes, and then Cassian leans down at the same time she rises up on her dainty feet, lifting up onto her toes to meet him halfway.

He’d told her that she’d found her home, months ago, before Scarif, and he’d hoped she hadn’t heard the real meaning behind the statement. There’s no way she wouldn’t understand now, not when he seals their lips together and holds himself against her body in a way he’d only dreamed of doing.

Jyn Erso doesn’t kiss like she fights, he discovers. She always fights like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do, she fights with everything she has, clawing and spitting and bringing men three times her size to their knees.

Jyn Erso kisses a bit more like a sunrise. She kisses like it’s something new, and precious. Cassian had swooped in expecting a fight, but he got  _this_  instead. He shifts his body language three seconds in, and cradles her jaw in his hands instead. Cassian went in kissing her like he was starving for it; he ends up kissing her like she’d given him everything he ever needed, like she was a feast he had time to actually enjoy.

Her lips slide over his one more time before she pulls back. “That’s all you needed?” She asks. It’s not a challenge. He knows that now. Jyn Erso is almost timid, and it shocks his entire system, that she’d be unsure of what he wanted from her.

“I need everything,” he admits, unashamed. Jyn blushes, but only just, the tops of her cheeks turning a light pink. “I want everything you’ll give me. Want to make you sigh,” he nudges his nose against hers, and kisses her lips again. “Want to hear how many ways I can make you say my name,” he kisses her jaw and Jyn melts slightly against him. “Want you to know how precious you are.”

Jyn nods, fervently. “I want that too,” she says. “I want and need that. And I want that for you too, all of it.”

“Okay then,” Cassian smiles at her. He slides the zipper of her jacket down, gently. “Ladies first.”

Jyn Erso lets him kiss her a few hundred more times, on each scar, over every freckle, against every secret curve of her body. She lets him press her into the mattress and whisper quiet truths about her beauty into her ear, and then into her inner thigh. She lets him share her spark, even for these stolen minutes, and Cassian takes everything she lets him have, because Cassian knows how quickly things can change, how quickly things can be lost.

She lets him do everything he needs, everything he’s been dreaming of doing since Jedha, and Cassian finally feels like he survived for a reason.

After, when they’re lying side by side in his bunk, Jyn wearing nothing but her crystal, Cassian wearing nothing at all, the blanket pulled up to their waists, he nuzzles against her hair.

“Jyn?” he murmurs.

“Hmm?” She’s already half-asleep, boneless from the number of times he’d insisted on going down on her (his jaw’s going to ache tomorrow, and he’s already looking forward to it).

“What did you trade Dameron? For the hull stripper?”

“I agreed to talk to Shara Bey for him,” Jyn yawns, prettily, every inch the Lotho-cat he’d always thought her to be. “I woulda done it anyway. Getting sick of him mooning over her during training. Did you know she was a pilot? The best ever? The prettiest? The most perfect?” She rolls her eyes and then turns on her side, burying her face in Cassian’s chest. “Made him promise me his firstborn kid, too. If you ask me,  _he’s_ the desperate one.”

Cassian snorts and kisses her on top of the head. “Well, you can’t blame the guy for falling in love,” he says reasonably. “It’s like gravity, inescapable. Love is what will keep this Rebellion alive. Even if falling in love isn’t the most rational thing to do in the middle of a war.”

“No one would accuse you of being irrational, Cass,” Jyn mumbles, about to pass out completely.

“I thought we were talking about Dameron?”

“Mhm,” Jyn’s nose nuzzles against him one more time. “Sure we were.”  

 


End file.
